


Cyperus

by Circumstellars



Series: October Challenge(s) Ficlets 2020 [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, I'm late a f I know, Old Five, Pre-Canon, Time travelling assassin, Whumptober 2020, but so much is on my plate forgive me, mild violence, you know the deal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26832928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Circumstellars/pseuds/Circumstellars
Summary: Five is on a contract somewhere in 2013, and he realises too late his target could have had valuable information about the apocalypse that hasn't happened yet. The longer it takes to get home, the stronger his self-loathing becomes.-Whumptober 2020#3: Manhandled - Forced to Knees - Held at gunpoint
Series: October Challenge(s) Ficlets 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1957306
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Cyperus

**Author's Note:**

> I'm late to the party, but I've had a few ideas cooking up for various October challenges, and no matter how busy I get, I never want to be left out of the fun.
> 
> A small ficlet featuring our old boy Five on a contract for The Commission, just feeling bad about a lot of things 'cause his life kinda sucks right now. 
> 
> Beta'd by the ineffable nucci and TheSillyQueen at Elliott's house (https://discord.gg/PVN8NXe). You guys helped me a lot, nucci with cleaning up my English, and TSQ telling me what feels right and what doesn't. Thanks guys, you're awesome.

It’s fucking hot. Melbourne _sucks_.

Five is sweating bullets. His blazer feels twice its weight. A thick string of perspiration lines his forehead where it meets his hat, and he wipes at it instinctively as he rounds a corner of the tight hallway. It’s very dark and it strains his old eyes, even with the help of a weak hallway light plugged in an outlet at the far end.

He’s faced with four doors on the upper level of this modest little condo. His target has a spouse and two kids, no pets – _thank god_. Two contracts ago Five nearly lost his precious danglers to a pair of unfriendly chow-chows with dreadful haircuts.  
  
At this point, it’s routine. A condo like this – simple three-bedroom and one bath setup, master conjoined with the bathroom. Two kids, each their own room, a boy and a girl probably, or maybe just siblings they felt better got along when they had their own space.  
  
 _Didn’t work for us_. Five’s upper lip twitches.  
  
He frowns into the shadows ahead of him, refocusing his eyes. Should be a quick and painless in-and-out job. He’ll have to take both target and spouse out – two bullets in their sleep no problem – but he’ll leave the kids. Where possible, he avoids having to even look at them. Killing adults is tedious, but having to terminate minors is downright unpleasant, and Five has often taken the more complicated routes in previous contracts to avoid it.

 _Let’s get this over with_.

He clenches his fists and fights the instinct to blink into the room to his right. If he gets the room wrong and he’s seen, Five would be _infuriated_.

It’s Commission’s orders: anyone who witnesses Five using his ability must be immediately executed, no questions asked. The Handler had once spoken in grave detail of the consequences she’d be forced to see through, should he not comply; the way her cherry-red lips had curled devilishly around the words, hardly fighting off a cartoonishly villainous grin, was still vivid in Five’s memory. She emphasised the importance of it _especially_ on contracts after October 1st, 1989. He’d always assumed there was some deeper reason for why he had to be extra cautious existing in the timeline at any point after his own birth, but Five suspects The Handler just doesn’t want to clean up any messes born of Five being recognised anytime after his original disappearance that fateful day in 2002. Afterall, he left at the height of The Umbrella Academy’s fame.  
  
He’s in 2013 now, and this is the closest they’ve ever sent him to The Apocalypse. Is this a sign of trust? _No_ , he reasons, _it’s a dare_.  
  
He ignores the dull throb in his chest and silently turns the brass knob, letting himself into the first room. Then, a sigh of relief – it’s the master bedroom. He quietly closes the door behind him and eyes the bed across the modest room. He’s grateful for the carpet as he sets down the briefcase and draws his pistol, silencer already equipped.  
  


Five approaches the bed but something is wrong. He squints into the night and realises that just a foot away in the bed lay only _one_ person, a man, softly snoring into a haphazardly placed pillow. _Fuck. Where’s the wife?_

  
He’s frustrated. Five had already scoped the first floor, and no one was around. _Where is she?_

He jumps with a start.  
  
‘ _Mmm_ … Danielle?’ The man in the bed rolls over, the springs in the mattress groaning with his weight. He isn’t awake, not yet, and Five curses under his breath. He should waste him, go find the wife and finish this, he thinks, but Five’s finger is tapping furiously on the cool metal of his gun, unmoving otherwise. _He’s asleep, let him go._  
  
He doesn’t have time for all this internal squabbling.  
  
Five snatches the briefcase and blinks back into the hallway. He grinds his teeth, already ruling out the second bedroom and the bathroom. It hits him then: the light at the end of the hallway wasn’t a nightlight, it was the light of the final room from under the door. It’s not a bedroom, it’s a study. _God damnit_.

He doesn’t waste any time blinking in and cocking his pistol at the ready.  
  
Books. Books. More books. Papers, pens, and a few mathematical tools.

A solid oak desk sits in the room’s centre, its every inch covered in binders and folders and papers, crowned by a slender laptop and bathed in the yellow light of a desk lamp.  
  
A woman, sleight in frame and wearing a maroon dressing robe, stands before a whiteboard with her back to Five. She doesn’t notice him just yet, oblivious as she scribbles away. He doesn’t linger.

He drops the briefcase but before it hits the floor Five is already crowding into her back with a flash and a jump, silencer digging into the silky material of the dressing gown. ‘Don’t move. Don’t scream.’

A terrified whimper shakes the woman’s body, but she complies. Rarely do they test his patience, but he’s already anticipating what she says next.

‘M-m-my _kids_ -’  
  
The bullet that tears through her upper back snatches her voice from the air. She drops to the floor like a heavy sack of bones and skin, hitting the carpet with a soft _thud_.  
  
Five regards her with jaded detachment, lips folded thinly beneath his white-grey moustache. The woman convulses, and he groans internally at his terrible aim. He really isn't a fan of pistols.  
  
The bullet has lodged somewhere in her pectoralis major, but clearly not directly through her heart. Five sighs wearily and cocks his gun again, aiming for her down-turned head.

 _Cyperus Rover, third sample from the Copernican unit due March 3, 2014._  
  
The black scrawling on the board catches Five’s eye and his brow crinkles studiously.  
  
He glances over various equations, some familiar, many not, and little blurbs he isn’t able to read without a pair of readers. In the corner sits a very rudimentary diagram of the moon, split open and dissected layer by layer.  
  
 _Lunar science: Post-Apollo  
  
ASA: Dr Braham [2012]_  
  
 _Distribution of basalts on the Lunar Mare  
  
_ Five’s stomach curls. An unusually strong feeling of _something_ curdles deep in his abdomen. _  
  
_‘You’re… a _lunar scientist_?’ The question is too quiet to hear, even if the other party hadn’t been bleeding out on the carpet next to his feet.

 _POP. CLANG_.  
  
‘Fuck.’  
  
Five doesn’t have to open the desk drawer to know a canister from The Commission has arrived and is waiting for him. Their timing is always impeccable, and incredibly suspicious.  
  
He rounds the desk and grabs it from the bottom drawer, making quick work of opening it, glancing at it, and tossing it back into the drawer.  
  
 _Return to HQ immediately_.  
  
A lunar scientist in 2013 had more value to him than any of the targets he had been assigned thus far, and he’s _wasted_ his opportunity with an impatient bullet. He approaches the crumpled body of the woman and nudges her over with one hand, but it’s definitely too late.  
The pale woman’s eyes are glazed over and empty, staring vacantly into the blank space over Five’s shoulder. Crimson trails of rapidly cooling blood stick to the palm of his hand and he wipes it distastefully on the arm of her ruined dressing gown.  
  
His impulsivity just cost him invaluable information. Five is angry with himself.  
  
He picks up the lined, loose-leaf of paper labelled _Cyperus Rover_ that he finds peaking out beneath the weight of two heavy texts on the desk’s edge, rips the top half and stuffs it in his blazer pocket.  
  
If anyone at The Commission realises he’s taken anything upon return, his life may be in danger, but Five is not a man who plays any game in halves. If this is destined to be his last contract for them, then maybe it’s for the better. He’s willing to draw Commission blood if his hand is forced.

He blinks to where he’d dropped the briefcase and scoops it up. It’s muscle-memory, adjusting the settings for the trip back, even as his mind continues spinning with his inadequacies.

‘Mum?’  
  
Five holds his breath.

‘Who… _Mum?’_ The little voice in the doorway tightens in panic. _Oh no._  
  
Five cocks the pistol, and the briefcase whirrs to life. _Sloppy_. _Sloppy. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy, awful, terrible, sick, stupid, clumsy, **monster** -  
_  
He snaps around wordlessly, aiming and firing in one motion. Quick and painless, a nearly soundless pop of a bullet flies and lands between the little boy’s eyes. His mouth is frozen in a silent scream, and his little, lifeless body doesn’t hit the ground before the briefcase swallows up Five and pulls him out of the timeline.  
  
Dark curls and round blue eyes burn behind Five’s eyelids. _Monster_.  
  
The ends justify the means, he attempts to reason, but his chest heaves painfully anyway. He materialises outside the lobby of The Commission, ignoring the way dozens of blue suits weave impassively around his dejected, unmoving form. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Trivia:  
> > Cyperus is the genus the Umbrella plant falls under.  
> > ASA stands for Australian Space Agency.  
> > Nah, I don't know what basalts are, but they're on the moon somewhere.  
> > I much prefer Five being savage and stabbing people than using guns, but that's me. :D


End file.
